FT MEPDE 

4BX 
1110 
Copy 1 


PREACHED IN ST. PETERS CHURCH, PHILADELPHIA, 

ON SATURDAY, OCTOBER 26 th, 1844, 

ON OCCASION OF 

THE CONSECRATION 

OF 

\ 

WILLIAM J. BOONE, M. D., 

MISSIONARY BISHOP TO CHINA ; 

GEORGE W. FREEMAN, D. D., 

MISSIONARY BISHOP OF ARKANSAS, HAVING PROVISIONAL CHARGE OF TEXAS J 

AND 

* 

HORATIO SOUTHGATE, A. M., 

MISSIONARY BISHOP IN THE DEPENDENCIES OF THE SULTAN OF TURKEY. 


BY 

THE RT. REV. STEPHEN ELLIOTT, JR., D. D., 

BISHOP OF THE DIOCESE OF GEORGIA. 


NEW.YORK : 

PUBLISHED FOR THE BOARD OF MISSIONS, 

BY DANIEL DANA JR. 

1844 . 

—-- 



SERMON 





























SERMON 


PREACHED IN ST. PETERS CHURCH, PHILADELPHIA, 


ON SATURDAY, OCTOBER 26th, 1844, 


ON OCCASION OF 


THE CONSECRATION 

# 

OK 

WILLIAM J. BOONE, M. D. t 

MISSIONARY BISHOP TO CHINA ; 

GEORGE W. FREEMAN, D. D., 

MISSIONARY BISHOP OF ARKANSAS, HAVING PROVISIONAL CHARGE OF TEXAS; 

AND 

HORATIO SOUTHGATE, A. M., 

MISSIONARY BISHOP IN THE DEPENDENCIES OF THE SULTAN OF TURKEY. 


BY 

THE RT. REV. STEPHEN ELLIOTT, JR., D. D., 

BISHOP OF THE DIOCESE OF GEOROIA. 

; 

> ■> > 

> i * 

NEW-YORK: 

PUBLISHED FOR THE BOARD OF MISSIONS, 

BY DANIEL DANA JR. 

1844 . 


/ 


















GiFT 

estate, e- 

YflUlAM C. R^VES 
APRIL, 19 40 




* 











/ . w 













General Theological Seminary, 

31st Oct. 1844. 


Right Reverend and dear Brother— 

The undersigned, your brethren, who were present at the Consecration of 
Missionary Bishops in St. Peter’s Church, Philadelphia, on Saturday last, res¬ 
pectfully ask a copy of the sermon delivered by you on that occasion, with your 
permission for its publication. We believe that it will promote the Missionary 
spirit, and set forth the Gospel in the Church, to the glory and praise of the 
Divine Redeemer, in the saving of immortal souls. It shall not go forth without 
our prayers that God may bless it to that end. 

Affectionately your brethren in Christ, 

PHIL’R CHASE, 

WILLIAM MEADE, 

G. W. DOANE, 

JAS. H. OTEY, 

JACKSON KEMPER, 
LEONIDAS POLK, 

W. R. WHITTINGHAM, 
ALFRED LEE. 


We were not present, but heartily unite in the above request— 

CHAS. P. MTLVAINE, 
SAM’L A. M‘COSKRY. 


To the Right Reverend Stephen Elliott, D.D. 

Bishop of Georgia. 


i 


New-York, Nov. 9th, 1844. 

Rt. Rev. and dear Brethren— 

If the sermon delivered upon the deeply interesting occasion of the Con¬ 
secration of Missionary Bishops, is thought by ; you likely to promote in any way, 
the Missionary feeling in the Church, it is, although written in extreme haste, 
entirely at your service for publication. I herewith enclose a copy to your 
address. 

Very affectionately in the bonds of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, 

STEPHEN ELLIOTT, JR. 
Rt. Rev. Philander Chase, Presiding Bishop, 

and other Bishops of the Prot. Epis. Church. 




l ' 1 If- • . ■ 





(Eoimcratton Sermon. 


Isaiah, chapter liv., verses 2, 3. 

44 Enlarge the place of thy tent, and let them stretch forth the curtains of thy 
habitations: spare not, lengthen thy cords, and strengthen thy stakes ; 

“For thou shalt break forth on the right hand and on the left; and thy seed 
shall inherit the Gentiles, and make the desolate cities to be inhabited.” 

There are periods in the history of the Church of Christ, when 
its members are permitted to enjoy an antepast of the rest which 
remaineth for the people of God, and to cherish within the privacy 
of their own bosoms the truths and comforts of Christianity. During 
such seasons, the duties of Christians are few and plain, involving 
no more responsibility than is circumscribed within a very narrow 
sphere—demanding no more special effort than is wanting to 
maintain the worship of God in its heaven-descended purity.— 
Again are there periods when there seems to be no rest for the 
Christian—no rest in the sense of a mere quiet, sluggish enjoyment 
of his religion—when every thing is in agitation, and the heavens, 
and the earth, and the sea, and the dry land appear to be shaken— 
when the blasts of the trumpet of the Lord are heard above the 
tumult, summoning the hosts of his elect to mighty effort and entire 
devotedness. Amid such holy excitement, Christians cannot be, 
without sin, the mere passive recipients of grace ; they must awake 




6 


out of sleep ; they must cast off the works of darkness, and put upon 
them the armor of light; they must string their energies to do and 
to suffer for the Lord’s sake— to do , to the utmost limit of the gifts 
wherewith the Lord has endowed them— to suffer , if needs be, even 
unto blood. 

Upon such a period of agitation have we, my beloved hearers, 
been cast. At no time in the history of our Church, have more 
gracious opportunities been afforded her of fulfilling her divine ap¬ 
pointment, while the natural means by which the Providence of 
God has produced those opportunities—the activity of reason—the 
progress of science—the restlessness of society, have encompassed 
her with temptations and with dangers. Both these conditions of 
things involve her ministers and her people in great responsibilities, 
and sin will lie at the door, unless they are met in the spirit in which 
Christ’s people should meet both duties and dangers. Let us con¬ 
sider such of these as belong to the special occasion upon which we 
are assembled, and may the Holy Ghost preside over this solemn 
scene, and seal with his baptism of fire our obedience to the part¬ 
ing commandment of Christ, “Go ye into all the world, and preach 
the Gospel to every creature.’’ 

In whatever direction we turn the eye of faith, there spreads 
away an ample and an open field, wherein it is our duty and our 
privilege to scatter seeds of truth and blessedness. It is not easy to 
decide whether the call is louder, or the prospect fairer, for the 
Church in her Foreign or Domestic scenes of labor. If, in the one , 
the ancient Churches of Greece and the lesser Asia seem ripe for 
the infusion of a purer spirit into their corrupted state, and for the 
abscission of superstitions that have crept over, and are crumbling 
their foundation of rock, in the other , the modern heresies which 
have sprung up in such luxuriance in our New World—rivalling in 
their rankness and rapidity of growth the vegetation which sur¬ 
rounds them—demand instant opposition, exposure, and destruc¬ 
tion. If, in the one , the gates of a mighty empire, which have been 
locked and double-locked for ages, have been thrown wide open for 
the reception of the truth as it is in Jesus, and hundreds of millions 
of Heathen are awaiting the feet of those who bring glad tidings of 
great joy; in the other , multitudes of red men —the auro^do vsg of the 
land which we have wrested to our own use—the remnants of the 
nations that once roamed, free and unlicensed as their native air, 


7 


over our national domain, are stretching forth their hands, if haply 
they may find the Lord, and receive with him the arts of peace, the 
comforts of life, and the hopes of immortality. If, in the one , Africa, 
weeping over her wrongs, and mourning her doom of darkness and 
of desolation, supplicates that light may be poured in upon her bar¬ 
barism and idolatry ; in the other , her own children, those that have 
reaped down our fields, are crying for priests whose lips keep know¬ 
ledge, at whose mouth they may seek the law, and their cries are 
entered into the ears of the Lord God of Sabaoth. We are in a 
strait betwixt two, and how shall we decide our duty? By not de¬ 
ciding between them, but by determining, each for himself, that so 
far as God will hear his prayer and help his efforts, his voice of 
cheering to the Church shall be, “ Enlarge the place of thy tent, 
and let them stretch forth the curtains of thine habitations; spare 
not, lengthen thy cords, and strengthen thy stakes; for thou shalt 
break forth on the right hand and on the left, and thy seed shall in¬ 
herit the Gentiles, and make the desolate cities to be inhabited.” 

This is the only language that will suit the emergency; for God 
has manifestly spread forth all this work before the Church, that 
she may declare his glory to the nations. No part of it must be 
neglected ; and thanks be to God, the Church has just determined, in 
solemn assembly, that no part of it shall be neglected. This day’s 
work is the exhibition of the measure of her faith—the solemn as¬ 
sumption of the position which, by the help of her covenant God, 
she intends to maintain before men and angels. And how sublime 
that position ! But yesterday cast forth, a callow, unfledged thing, 
from her parent nest, to-day she spreads the wings of faith and hope 
over four continents. But yesterday, and she herself was struggling 
for life in a world that frowned upon her, and cast out her name as 
evil, and to-day, in the very spirit of her divine Master, is she cover¬ 
ing with the mantle of her charity the desolate and the perishing of 
the earth, and imparting to them the warmth and the vitality of her 
own life blood. But yesterday that she received the fulness of her 
divine commission from the compassionate kindness of her Mother 
Church, and to-day she more than recompenses all that love by 
taking her station side by side with that venerable mother, to battle 
for the faith once delivered to the saints. But yesterday, and none 
so poor to do her reverence, now—a generation has scarce passed 
away—thousands of noble hearts will turn to her from isles and 


8 


continents, and bow before her for having dared, first and foremost 
in these degenerate times, to send the light and life of Christianity, 
in the fulness of its power, and in the integrity of its order, to the 
Heathen nations of the world. 

Since our existence as a Church, we have been permitted to wit¬ 
ness no such exhibition of faith as that which now engages our at¬ 
tention. And if faith be the principle of the Church’s growth, and 
the measure of the Church’s strength, then will this day ever con¬ 
stitute an epoch in the Church’s history! What England in the 
fulness of her power, in the immensity of her resources, in the depth 
of her piety, has just begun to do for her own children, we are bold 
to imitate, not for our own children, but for the children of our 
Heavenly Father, of whatever blood and whatever lineage ! Catch¬ 
ing from her the noble spirit that has marked her recent efforts, or 
rather, I should say, drinking with her at the same fountain of divine 
inspiration, we have hastened to obey the injunction of our Lord 
and the practice of the apostles, and send forth men, full, as we 
trust, of faith and of the Holy Ghost, confiding to them all the 
powers which our Lord has confided to us, that they may lack no 
thing which we can confer upon them of authority, or grace, or 
blessing. We lay our hands upon them and separate them for the 
work whereunto the Holy Ghost has called them, in full confidence 
that Christ will sustain us in our efforts, and bless them in their 
labors—that he will furnish his Church with an abundance of trea¬ 
sure out of the self-denial of his faithful people, and fulfil to the 
ministry of his word his gracious promise of being with them always 
to the end of the world ! Had reason, with her cold calculating spirit, 
been permitted to shape our counsels—reason, which narrows every 
thing to the sphere of sense and sight—we might have hesitated 
about the mighty labors to which we have pledged the Church; but 
faith was our instrument of vision—faith, which keeps before her 
eye one single object, the command of her divine Lord, and in obey¬ 
ing that, embraces things not seen, and realizes the visions of hope. 
Under her guidance, we commission these our brethren to take pos¬ 
session of the kingdoms of this world, assured that they will one 
day become the kingdoms of Christ. We send them forth armed 
only with the Cross of Christ and the foolishness of preaching, satis¬ 
fied that they will vanquish the philosophy, and subdue the feelings 
of man. We look not at the human strength which is behind us ; 


9 


we reckon not the hosts, nor the might, nor the associations that are 
before us. Our power depends not on the one, nor is our courage 
daunted by the other. Our trust is in the arm of the Lord, and we 
see as the prophet’s servant did when his eyes were opened—not 
chariots and horses of fire—but what is mightier than all chariots 
and all horses, the fire of the Holy Ghost, ready to go forth with 
the ministers of the Lord, and with the truth of his Christ. 

Nor can I think that we have entered rashly into a position which 
might have been more advantageously occupied by another branch 
of the Church of Christ. It seems as if God, in his wise provi¬ 
dence, has cast upon England and these United States the conver¬ 
sion of the world. None other of the civilized nations of the earth 
are in a condition to take any larger part in this glorious enterprise. 
Some are hindered by position, having but little maritime connec¬ 
tion with the rest of the world, and lacking the missionary zeal 
which would lead them to seek it. Others are disabled by the 
withering blight of rationalism, from doing more than preserving 
alive upon their own altars the light of Gospel truth. Others, 
again, are overlaid by superstition and idolatry, and, in their Mis¬ 
sionary ardor, are disseminating falsehood instead of truth,—are deal¬ 
ing out death instead of imparting life. With the English and 
American Churches alone are found those gifts of nature and of 
grace, which make them prosper, through the grace of God, to 
enter with hope and confidence upon the evangelizing of the world. 
Embodying in their Liturgies and formularies, plainly and fully, the 
truths of the Gospel—preserving almost every thing of primitive 
practice which was worth preserving, and retaining very little, if 
any, of its corruptions—organized upon the closest model of the 
apostolic times—hindered, especially among us, by very few re¬ 
straints upon religious action, we have been evidently set apart for 
the Missionary work. And the enterprise of these nations and their 
commercial connections, and the roving spirit of their people, and the 
rapid growth of both governments, all indicate that God is preserv¬ 
ing them , and building us up for this very end of spreading his Gospel 
among the nations of the earth. And, besides all this, a common line¬ 
age, and a common language, and a common faith, and a common com¬ 
mission, point us to the division of this work without any rivalry, save 
the generous one of spreading the truth—without any jealousy, save 
a holy jealousy for Zion and for Jerusalem. Wherever our Mis- 


10 


sionaries meet, it will be as brother meeting brother—souls, united 
by the one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, 
will go out to each other in sweet communion ; and the Church will 
find that there is in her a stronger bond than that of interest or na¬ 
ture-—the bond of a holy faith and a divine charity. 

And just as clearly as God has marked out these two nations for 
the conversion of the world, does he seem to have overruled their 
policy in such a manner as to give the fullest scope to that particular 
form of ecclesiastical organization which has grown up in each. 
An establishment, connected so strictly with its government as is 
the English Church, could not move, in its integrity as a Church, 
upon the great Mahometan or Heathen empires, without at once 
exciting political jealousy. Her bishops and ecclesiastics would be 
looked upon with a more suspicious eye even than those of Rome, 
inasmuch as her power is infinitely greater, and the claims of Rome 
are spiritual rather than temporal. Wonderfully, therefore, has it 
been arranged of God, that the English Government should have 
steadily pursued for ages a commercial system which has led her to 
plant and cherish colonies in many islands and on every continent. 
Empires have grown up around her emigrants in almost every 
quarter of the globe, and hundreds of millions of heathen—nearly 
one-third of the world’s population—are linked directly with her, as 
subjects or dependents. Upon these and over these can her estab¬ 
lishment have full dominion, and to feed these growing empires with 
the bread of life, to pour in light upon the barbarism which sur¬ 
rounds her and belongs to her, will call for all her energies and ab¬ 
sorb all her resources. She cannot, for centuries to come, do more 
—if she can do that, it will be a mighty work—than satisfy the cries 
of her own children and the necessities of her actual dependents. 
The Heathen world, so far as it lies disconnected from her gigantic 
embrace, and the great empires of Western Asia, are cast upon us 
for the knowledge of the Lord. We must answer their demand for 
the Gospel, or it will be answered from papal Rome, and Christi¬ 
anity will mourn and perish in the house of its friends. While 
England has opened China, she cannot fill it—nay, for the reason 
given just now, she cannot touch it in her ecclesiastical integrity. 
Besides, her India empire, her African colonies, her island conti¬ 
nents, her red and black subjects of British America, would feel 
that every pound and every missionary that was turned towards 


11 


the Heathen, was so much taken from them. What are three 
bishops, with perhaps as many hundred clergymen, among the 
many, many millions of Hindostan ? What is a single bishop for 
such a world as Australia ? or such an island as New Zealand ? 
And see what a boundless field spreads a way north of the Canadas 
to the Frozen Ocean, covered with her Indian subjects. No, we can¬ 
not and we must not hope that England can do and will do every thing. 
She will do the part which God has allotted to her, evangelize her 
empire colonies, and rejoice that we are in a condition, from our un¬ 
shackled ecclesiastical arrangements, from the anti-colonial and 
peaceful policy of the government under which we live, to make 
up what is lacking of her ability. She will rejoice that our bishops 
can go, simply as heralds of the Cross, representing nothing but the 
body of Christ, seeking no foothold upon the soil, asking for no pri¬ 
vileges save those of scattering the seeds of truth, and preaching the 
unsearchable riches of Christ. 

Having determined this point, it is very striking, and more I 
think than accidental, that the Church, in this her first full devel- 
opement of her Missionary work, should have given pledge, as it 
were, that she intends, God helping her, to plant the truth, to revive 
the truth, and to preserve the truth. In this relation do the countries 
to which our brethren are now devoting themselves for life, stand 
to the truth, and it is difficult to estimate which is the most interest¬ 
ing, which is the most important. While the mystery which has 
hung forages over China ; while the immensity of her domain and 
the vastness of her population ; while the high civilization she has 
attained, and the ethical institutions under which she has outlived 
the rise and fall of many empires, and many religions, invest her 
with a greatness which overpowers the mind, and staggers the 
conception, the feelings of the Christian turn with a deeper yearn¬ 
ing to the land hallowed by the presence of his Saviour, and the 
Churches planted by the zeal and watered with the blood of the 
Apostles. If faith animates him to lift up Christ as an ensign for 
the millions of China, and look forward to the time when souls shall 
have been attracted by its mysterious influence, and nations shall 
have been born in a day, love turns his heart to the remnants of 
apostolic glory which still linger with the Churches of the East; 
and he burns to light once more upon their corrupted altars the fire 
of apostolic truth, and in its blaze see lslamism crumble to its ruin ! 


12 


With both is the charm of antiquity—both have been the cradles of 
the world ; but while the one has ever cradled error, the other has 
cradled all the truth which God has sent upon the.earth. How 
glorious, to grapple at the same moment in the faith of Christ, 
with aged, hoary, deep-rooted error, and tear it from its vast foun¬ 
dations, and build up equally aged truth out of the ruins and cor¬ 
ruptions of the present! With the destruction of the one, shall in¬ 
numerable souls be rescued from the condemnation of the wicked ; 
with the purification of the other, shall come the latter-day glory, the 
glory of an universal Church, having one Lord, one faith, one bap¬ 
tism, one God and Father of all. 

In strong contrast with these fields of foreign labor, yet equally 
interesting and equally important stands out the scene of labor of 
our Domestic Missionary bishop. But neither its interest nor its 
importance belong to the present, nor yet have they any connection 
with the past; it is in the future that they lie,—it is through a vista 
of years that they must be viewed and calculated ! Could the 
Churchmen of a generation back, rise from their graves and look 
upon the country which they scorned and neglected, how bitter 
would be their sorrow, how deep their repentance ! It would be 
hard for them to recognize in the teeming valley of the Mississippi, 
with its powerful States, and its swelling population, and its abound¬ 
ing wealth, the far offland which they deemed it visionary to con¬ 
template, and fanaticism to evangelize. It would amaze them to 
behold eight bishops clustering around that missionary whom they 
then deemed an enthusiast, for turning his thoughts, and his prayers, 
and his footsteps westward,—looking up to him as their presiding 
father, as their pioneer and their guide to the dioceses over which 
they rule,—dioceses whose very names would strike upon their ears 
as novel ajid unnatural ! Could they speak to us, how anxiously 
would they exhort us, how earnestly would they pray us, as we 
loved our Church,—as we loved our country,—-as we loved our 
homes and firesides,—as we loved the name of Christ,—not to be to 
that rising world the cruel stepmother which the Church of their day 
had proved herself. They would tell us to measure the future by 
the past, and in that virgin valley to behold the mistress of this 
western world. They would bid us watch the rolling tide of pop¬ 
ulation bearing on its bosom the bold and the enterprising, and the 
reckless of every nation, and commingling them into one mass of 


13 


vigorous thought and irresistible energy, and calculate its power 
for good or evil to all futurity. They would warn us to ponder 
upon the reflex influence which must flow back from this seat of 
political dominion upon the institutions of the East, strengthening 
their moral power and preserving their religious character, or else 
corrupting, debasing, and overthrowing them. They would bid us 
meditate upon the relation this ever-swelling mass of thinking, rea¬ 
soning, moving creatures must have upon the Church of Christ 
and the condition of his kingdom, and awake to duty, to zeal, to 
self-denial, to self-devotedness. 

Let not, my beloved hearers, these words of warning fall dead 
upon your ears because they are imaginary,—because our venerable 
fathers rise not from their graves and speak them in your ears. 
They are the words of soberness and truth. Imagination cannot 
conceive, nor can language describe the war of intellect, the con¬ 
flict of opinion, the struggle of mind with mind, and of soul with 
soul, which is to be waged upon the battle-field of the West. Al¬ 
ready are sown broadcast the seeds of infidelity and mischief, and 
nothing can control them but the Gospel in its power and in its 
unity. The strange and ominous cloud of Mormonism, with its re¬ 
ligious and political elements, all foreboding mischief, not only to 
our creeds, but to our liberties—an imposture strangely enough 
foretold by Southey as most likely to arise just where it has done, 
and to find fuel for its flame among the roaming and churchless 
emigrants of the West—is a dark foreshadowing of what we may 
anticipate, when these elements of Atheism, and unbelief, and vice, 
and superstition shall have been permitted—if they are permitted, 
which God forefend—to ferment and corrupt; and they cannot be 
met with any success, save by the Church, for that is the only 
faithful body which goes forth in unbroken phalanx, itself freed 
from the evils of disruption and separation. Strain every nerve 
then, Churchmen, to multiply bishops, clergy, colleges, seminaries, 
churches in the West, for upon your present action may depend 
the future fate of country, church, religion, in this land. 

How wonderful is the adaptation of the Gospel to every condi¬ 
tion of human nature! How mysterious that the same remedy may 
be applied to every evil of man’s heart, to ignorance, to corruption, 
to infidelity ! And yet so it is ! It is the blood of Christ seen by 
faith through the operation of the Holy Ghost, which is to be pow- 


14 


erful to the destruction of the kingdom of Satan, under whatever 
phase it may appear. This is foolishness to the natural man, but it 
is the power of God and the wisdom of God unto salvation. It was 
with this weapon that the apostles of our Lord fought and conquered 
every form of sin ; and Pharisaism and philosophy, wisdom and 
barbarism, felt alike its subduing influence, and melted into obedi¬ 
ence and holiness. It was with this lever that their successors over¬ 
turned the opposing and persecuting systems of Paganism, and 
gained the triumph for Jesus over all the external enemies of his 
dominion. This it is which must ever give its power to the Church 
of Christ, and her danger is, especially in periods of intellectual 
movement, lest she be swerved from the simplicity of the truth and 
the purity of the faith. When all is agitation around her, when the 
intellect of man is working out new trains of thought, and devising 
new systems of philosophy, when the sphere of sense is itself ex¬ 
panding, and nature seems to be developing her hidden mysteries, 
—it is hard for the Church, and still harder for the Christian, to be 
satisfied with the ancient truth of God, and to rest upon revelation 
as given once and forever in its completeness ! The temptation is 
toward developement,—developement of doctrine, or developement 
of practice,—the one running into rationalism, the other into super¬ 
stition. In either case is it the worldly spirit creeping into the 
Church, and manifesting itself, according to the genius of the coun¬ 
try, or the age, or the individual, in bold speculation, or ascetic de¬ 
votion. Whichever may be the shape it takes, it is alike injurious 
to the power of the Church, alike fatal to her impression upon the 
world. Infected with either tendency, she cannot do her errand of 
mercy ; or if she does, mingles so much error with her work of 
truth, that it soon corrupts and perishes. While, therefore, brethren 
beloved, we are seizing the opportunities which God, in his provi¬ 
dence, is affording us, let us be careful so to maintain the Church 
which has been entrusted to our keeping, that when we shall send 
her forth, we may be sure that she will teach the simple truth of 
God, and impart to the nations whereto she is sent, not merely her¬ 
self and her forms, but the spirit of Him who is her head and very 
life ! An awful responsibility rests upon us, the chief shepherds of 
the flock of Christ, when we contemplate such fields as those in 
which we are now preparing, through the instrumentality of these 
our brethren* to make an impression for eternity. It is fearful to 


15 


calculate the mischief which may be inflicted even for this world— 
still more fearful to weigh the misery which may ensue in the re¬ 
gions of everlasting woe—by the promulgation of error in the stead 
of truth,—by the corruption, in however slight a degree, of the Gospel 
of God’s grace, at a moment of such intense interest, under circum¬ 
stances of such solemn grandeur. As the Lord opens the world 
before us, and we become more prominently the stewards and dis¬ 
pensers of his mysteries of grace, let us strive and pray that we may 
be permitted to guard with jealousy his Holy Ark , and present her 
' ever to the world under one unchangeable aspect,— Catholic, for 
every truth of God,— Protestant, against every error of man ! 
















library of congress 


0 020 918 774 

-% 


CONSECRATION SERMON. 











